


Rock of Ages

by sci_fis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:13:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sci_fis/pseuds/sci_fis
Summary: Sam says nothing.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	Rock of Ages

It’s 3 a.m., and Dean can’t sleep.

He wanders into the kitchen in search of something vaguely undefined and sees Sam there.

The bottle of whiskey in front of his little brother is still mostly full, a small empty space at the top, transparent, full of invisible air, a palmful of it. 

When Dean kneels in front of Sam and cups his cheek, it’s the first skin-on-skin contact they’ve had in weeks. Months, maybe. Dean’s lost track.

‘Okay?’ His voice is heavy with all the sleep he hasn’t gotten since Sam shot God and got a shoulder full of cursed bullet in exchange for his act of rebellion.

There was a time when rebellion was the story of their lives, when they fought and won, when they fought for each other as though nothing else was worth saving.

Sam just shakes his head, the movement so indiscernible that Dean wouldn't have known it if they hadn't been touching. Sam doesn’t pull away. Sam's voice, Dean thinks, if he could have heard it, would have been in splinters, each needle-thin wisp of it finding its way inside Dean like invisible threads that he couldn’t have stopped from unraveling.

Dean nods, lets his fingers trail from Sam’s face to his shoulder, to the invisible, never-healing wound beneath, the pads of his fingertips useless against the layers of clothing Sam’s wearing like so many shields against Dean’s touch.

Dean’s hand comes to rest on Sam’s knee, rough denim under his callused fingertips. In some ways, in all the ways that don’t matter, his skin remembers Sam’s. He remembers every scar left on Sam’s skin from all the times Dean wasn’t there to prevent some immutable force from marking his brother. His family. His blood. His kid. The boy he raised. The boy he failed.

Sam says nothing.

‘Sammy,’ Dean says. His other hand curves around the nape of Sam’s neck, under all his luxurious hair. The generosity of his hair, the full, heavy weight of it, is a gift that isn’t Dean’s anymore, but he loves it still, his hand hidden beneath it like the secret they’ve kept for so long.

Sam blinks in slow motion, as though they’re underwater, colors swirling in his eyes for a fraction of a second before his eyelids close like curtains. When they open again, his gaze isn’t on Dean.

Dean misses him like a violently amputated limb.

He knows why the distance between them is growing by the day. By the second. He feels drunk on the nothingness of it. Unlike alcohol, it doesn’t warm his blood. It makes his veins petrify, as though they’re frozen in memory, as though they’re desperate to preserve their remembrance of Sam. 

‘I’ve had worse,’ Sam says, looking beyond Dean at something that’s invisible to Dean, as though answering a question that Dean hasn’t learned how to articulate yet. As though the degree to which one is tortured is more important than the act itself, as though the reminder that he’s been hurt worse could make Dean—any Dean, in any universe—feel better about it.

‘Get some sleep,’ Dean says, a useless imperative, as though saying it will make it happen.

Sam almost smiles. He turns even further away, his fingers curling in on themselves as though he’s clutching air.

Dean exhales into the space between them, a quiet sound like something breaking in the far distant past.

Imagined—or remembered—Sams and Deans are crammed into Sam’s head. Dean knows what Sam saw. Versions of them meeting unimaginable ends, hurtling into an unseeable future.

Both his hands press into Sam’s body for a second, knee and nape, before falling away. Another Dean may have brushed the curtain of hair out of Sam’s eyes, seen the colors in his eyes, read them the way Dean, this Dean, used to in the past.

For now, there’s only the absence of color. There’s only the air in the space between them, unsurpassable. 

Dean’s footfalls as he walks away from Sam are the harshest sounds he’s ever inflicted on himself, rattling in the silence of the bunker like the echoes of gunshots fired at the ceiling of a cave.

**Author's Note:**

> Didn’t think I’d be doing any more codas while the show was still on, but desperate situations, etc. ;-)
> 
> Sorry this is just sad. I think it's going to be sad until it ends. At least we have fanfic?


End file.
